Opening Up the Bible

8. The Letters and Revelation 2008

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Cambridge ON

Sunday June 8 2008

10:00 a.m.

Children's Message Preparation:

- PDA with file of ringing – after a few seconds



Children's Message:

Start pda file of ringing phone

-So glad you're here...

-Did you hear that? ...

-There it is again.

-I think I'd better get it. (Answers phone)

-Hello?

-Yes, that's right, we're all here. All [8] of us.

-But do you realize that we're in the middle of the

Children's Time?

-Well, sure. I guess I could do that.

-You're welcome. Bye, Lord

-Boy, that was weird.

-Any idea what that was about? ....

-It was about you;

that's why I said “We're all heare. All [8] of us.]

-God was on the phone,

and God wants me to give you a message:

-God said that he's glad you're here, too!



-Today we're talking about the part of the Bible

that is letters.

-Not letters like A, B, C.

-But letters like postcards that come in the mail.

-Most of them were written by a man named Paul

-And the funny thing about reading these letters

is that it's a bit like

hearing one side of a phone conversation –

like you just did when I answered the phone.

-It's clear what I said,

but you're not so sure

just what it is that I'm responding to.

-When we read Paul's letters,

it's clear enough what he wrote,

but what we don't know a whole lot about

is the people he's writing to,

and what kind of situations he's responding to

when he writes.

-Anyway, St. Paul was a hero in the Bible.

-He did so much work in spreading the Good News

about God's love freely given in Christ Jesus.

-But did you know

that Paul wasn't always so helpful to God?

-Let me read you a story about Paul,

whose name in Hebrew sounds like “Saul.”

Read Saul story from scroll

-So the one who was once persecuting Jesus

became one who told everybody about Jesus!

-And almost half of the New Testament

was written by Paul.

-Prayer:

Thanking God for coming to us to help us change into followers and sharers. Amen.

Handout Paul story sheets....



Sermon:

-Last week in our “Opening Up the Bible” series

we turned to the New Testament,

and focused on the 4 Gospels.

-Each gospel is written by a different person,

in a different situation,

and at a different time.

-Each gospel writer crafts details of the story

to meet the needs and interests

of the people of his day.

-Mark writes in times of suffering

about a compassionate Jesus who feels with us.

-Matthew is written for a Jewish community

and highlights Jesus as the fulfiller of God's law.

-Luke's Gospel

is written at a time the church is expanding,

and to support that change in understanding,

Luke's Gospel brings us a message of

grace and forgiveness, hope and inclusion

for all!

-And John's gospel, the last of the four to be written,

restates the gospel for a Greek community

which is battling a heresy called gnosticism.

-We are blessed to have these similar-yet-different

gospels,

for each will speak to us at particular times and places

and situations within our own lives.

-Today we turn to the remaining books of the

Greek Testament:

the Letters or Epistles,

and then in the Sending Thought,

the Revelation of St. John.

-Paul was one of Christianity's first missionaries,

and many of the New Testament books are his letters,

written to some of the house-churches

he had helped to start.

-Scholars think that the earliest of Paul's letters

is what we call his “First Letter to the Thessalonians.”

-That letter was so well-received

that it was shared with other congregations.

-Eventually, the church recognized various epistles

as being especially meaningful,

and in time, they came to be included in our Bible.

-The letters are grouped into three sections:

- first, those written to communities –

such as the church in Thessalonika and Corinth;

- second, those written to individuals –

such as the letters to Titus and Timothy;

-and third the general letters –

such as those bearing the names of James, or

Peter, or John.

-Withing these 3 groupings,

the letters are arranged longest to shortest.

-Scholars believe that some of the letters

bearing Paul's name

were not actually written by Paul.

-Likely they were written by students of Paul,

who honoured their teacher

by listing him as the author.

-That was a common practise in antiquity.

-So it's generally believed

that the letters to Timothy and Titus

were not written by Paul himself,

and there is some thought

that the letters to the Ephesians, Colossians,

and the second letter to the Thessalonians

might have been authored by those following in

Paul's footsteps.

-Almost all of the epistles

were written to specific recipients

in specific situations.

-But we don't know all that much

about the specific situations.

-Have you ever listened to one end

of a telephone conversation,

and wondered what the person you couldn't hear

was saying or asking?¹

-Reading the New Testament letters

is a bit like that:

almost all of Paul's letters

seem to be written in response to questions or issues

in the early church.

-For example,

wouldn't it be interesting and helpful

to know more about the situation to which Paul refers

in I Corinthians 6.6-9

(Page 225 NT, Good News Bible)

⁶ Instead, one Christian goes to court against another and lets unbelievers judge the case!

⁷ The very fact that you have legal disputes among yourselves shows that you have failed completely. Would it not be better for you to be wronged? Would it not be better for you to be robbed?⁸ Instead, you yourselves wrong one another and rob one another, even your own brothers and sisters!

-This is Paul's response to an apparent report,

or perhaps a question,

about Christians taking one another to court.

-But that's about all we know

regarding this specific situation.

-If you were to imagine a letter

written from a child at camp to his mother,

you'd probably envision it starting something like this:

Monday July 7

Dear Mom,

How are you? I'm fine.

Yesterday ... and so on

Love,

Your Son, Junior

-Paul, too, used a typical letter format of his day,

but he expanded it to express his faith.

- “Ancient Greek letters customarily began

with the names of the sender and the recipient,

and a short greeting.”²

-The earliest of Paul's letters, 1^st Thessalonians,

begins on page 275 in the Good News Bible.

-The senders are “Paul, Silas, and Timothy,”

and the recipients are “the people in the church

at Thessalonica,

who belong to God the Father, and the Lord

Jesus Christ.”

-Note that for the greeting,

Paul combines the typical Hebrew greeting of peace

(shalom in Hebrew),

with the typical Greek greeting “Grace”.

- “May grace and peace be yours” writes Paul.

-And that reflects the church of his day:

a church that began with Jews,

but had now reached out to Greeks.

-In ancient letters,

the salutation was followed by a short prayer of

thanksgiving,

or sometimes a prayer

for those to whom the letter was sent.

-When Paul writes his thanksgiving,

it's always based upon the theme

of the rest of the letter.

-In that way, it's like our “Prayer of the Day”

near the beginning of worship:

it gathers up the themes about to be discussed.

-For example,

in the thanksgiving of I Thessalonians 1.10,

Paul says “wait for his Son to come from heaven.”

-That will be Paul's theme in chapters 4 and 5,

in which he answers

questions from the congregation

about when Christ will return,

and about those who have died before Christ returns.

-There is one time, however,

when Paul deviates from his customary template.

-When writing to the church in Galatia,

Paul omits the Thanksgiving!

-The Letter to the Galatians starts on page 250

of the Good News Bible.

-There you'll see that Paul starts in typical fashion

“from Paul ... [and] the brothers who are here ...

to the churches of Galatia ... grace and peace.”

-But then Paul launches straight into

the body of the letter!

-Instead of giving thanks,

Paul writes in verse 6:

“I am surprised at you!

In no time at all,

you are deserting the one who called you

by the grace of Christ...”

-Paul gets straight to the point,

which is –

as Paul will later proclaim in chapter 3 verse 24 –

^{24 ...} the Law was in charge of us until Christ came, in order that we might then be put right with God through faith.²⁵ Now that the time for faith is here, the Law is no longer in charge of us.

²⁶ It is through faith that all of you are God’s children in union with Christ Jesus.²⁷ You were baptized into union with Christ, and now you are clothed, so to speak, with the life of Christ himself.²⁸ So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.

-And then Paul goes into his great treatise

on Christian freedom in chapter 5:

“Freedom is what we have!

Do not allow yourselves to become slaves again!”

-Some in the Galatian church

seem to have been insisting

that in order to be a true Christian,

one had to obey the law of Moses.

-Paul is so shocked

that he omits the usual thanksgiving from his response.



-Just like the four gospels,

the letters of the New Testament

were written to specific recipients

in specific situations.

-The gospels and letters have stood the test of time.

-They have been chosen by the church

because they both witness to, and bear,

God's redeeming love and grace.

-We are blessed to have these similar-yet-different

writings,

for each will speak to us

at particular times and places and situations

within our own lives.

-Thanks be to God! Amen!

#815 I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light



Sending Thought: The Revelation of John

-The final book in our New Testament,

the Revelation of John,

was written near the end of the first century.

-At that point in time,

Christians were being persecuted.

-In times of persecution,

a type of writing called “apocalypse” was common.

-In veiled form for safety,

apocalyptic writings interpret then-current events.

-Due to the danger inherent in criticizing any

despotic ruling government,

apocalyptic literature bears its message indirectly,

through symbols and signs.

-An apocalypse contains hidden meanings

which would only be understood

by those to whom it was addressed.

-The Revelation of John is an example

of apocalyptic literature.



-Apocalyptic literature

is not written to predict the future,

and it's a misuse to interpret it that way.

-The main purpose of apocalyptic literature

is to give people hope

in the midst of current persecution,

encouraging them to remain faithful,

for we know that God is always working,

using imperfect, and even evil people

to bring about God's purposes.

-In this context

of encouraging God's people during suffering

listen to these words of comfort

from first and final chapters of The Revelation of John:

^{Chapter 1.9} I am John, your brother, and as a follower of Jesus I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his Kingdom. I was put on the island of Patmos because I had proclaimed God’s word and the truth that Jesus revealed.¹⁰ On the Lord’s day the Spirit took control of me, and I heard a loud voice, that sounded like a trumpet, speaking behind me.¹¹ It said, “Write down what you see, and send the book to the churches in these seven cities: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.” ...

^{Chapter 21.1} Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished.² And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband.³ I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: “Now God’s home is with human beings! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God.⁴ He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared.”

⁵ Then the one who sits on the throne said, “And now I make all things new!” He also said to me, “Write this, because these words are true and can be trusted.”⁶ And he said, “It is done! I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end. To anyone who is thirsty I will give the right to drink from the spring of the water of life without paying for it.

The Benediction follows ....